As a coming-of-age melodrama and high seas adventure, White Squall is fair.

The Mandalorian’s memorable catchphrase is: “This is the way.” His first theatrical feature gets about halfway there.

Too raw for kids and too simplistic for adults.

More than the usual bad or even numbingly horrible movie. It's an amalgam of many of the modern cinema's worst tendencies and modern filmmaking's most unfortunate misconceptions.

A sexy, moody comedy that plays like a dreamy comic novel.

Nothing in her performance in the second two-thirds of the film hints at the shallows or depths that could allow Maggie to be a killer -- before or after. [19 March 1993, p.C1]

Taking place mostly over the course of a single day, it’s a smart and languorous film that finds time to luxuriate in conversations and to create a feeling for small-town American life.

Legend of the Guardians sounds as if it were scripted by a team of 11-year-old boys, with too much plot for its 91-minute running time, a script that steals liberally from "Star Wars" and some occasionally eye-roll-worthy weirdness.

Much of the honest dialogue has the same feel as John Hughes' and Cameron Crowe's movies during their best years, while there's a half-serious hipness that recalls the first eight episodes of "The O.C."

Has a smart mix of things going for it, including a self-effacing sense of humor.

Rote drama better suited for British television than theaters.

Aims to do nothing but please, and it accomplishes its modest aim with charm and intelligence.

Kim's masterly, poetic ending is the cherry on top in this anime, good for a rainy day or any day.

Perhaps this is a film that needs to be seen several times to fully understand the last 20 minutes. But in my book, that's not what a great ghost story should do.

This love letter to man's best friend will make dog fanciers roll over and do tricks. It's so warmhearted, you'll want to run out and hug the nearest big, sloppy mutt. And while you're watching it, have your handkerchief ready.

Can't Hardly Wait has freshness, comic invention and an engaging romantic spirit.

Essentially, “I.S.S.” is a fine movie for what it is, and the only reservation is what it is. It’s a cramped-space movie in which the stakes feel higher to the characters than they do for us.

Red Sparrow is a thoroughly entertaining movie that stays fresh and interesting for all of its two-hours-plus running time. But what kicks it into a higher level is that it’s a terrific vehicle for Jennifer Lawrence, one of the few movie stars who deserves one, who is a film star in the classic sense.

In a way, the new Carrie is almost too easy to enjoy. Everything discordant and all the nagging weirdness and strange feelings surrounding the original have been smoothed down, and what we're left with is a well-made, highly satisfying and not particularly deep high school revenge movie.

Brought off with such skill and commitment that there isn't any time to snicker at its obviousness.

Measure of a Man is intended as a touching coming-of-age film about one crucial summer in a young man’s life. But it’s a movie of gestures and feints, in which we’re constantly being told of events and relationships rather than seeing or feeling them.

For Pérez Biscayart, it’s the sound equivalent of a masterful silent-film performance, and for Perelman, it’s the welcome return of an important filmmaker.

Although this leisurely tale of an aged French sculptor offers a few other small pleasures, in the end it lacks heft.

The flashy skate-level camera techniques that conceal the actors' inadequacies on ice can't compare with a full-figure view of a championship-quality long program. An ''undoable'' medal-winning move that is pivotal to the plot is never clearly explained or depicted. And movie histrionics can't approximate the drama of real competition. [27 March 1992, p.D7]

Fly to the Moon is absolutely awful. The only interesting thing about it is how long it takes for a viewer to figure out how bad it really is.

When Costner is good, as he is here, his acting has a purity to it, an unspoken moral dimension. Underneath the sensitive, stoic facade is a loquacious, intellectually alert actor with an encyclopedic understanding of the film tradition he occupies: the rugged, humble movie hero, embodied by the likes of Gary Cooper and Henry Fonda.

Coming now, today, In Time is not just satisfying. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's important, because that would overstate it, but it certainly feels like part of the national conversation. It arrives in theaters at a time when people are camped out in New York saying the same things as the people in the movie. It's weird the way films often anticipate the near future.

The attempt is to create a reality wide enough to accommodate the extremes of absurdity and hard political truth, but the pieces never cohere, and so we end up with a rattling bag of disparate elements.